Archive for corporate America – Page 2

What would we do without a watchdog to protect us and reveal what we already know: We need more (and as you'll see, way more effective) oversight of Big Corporate Ventures; and that Big Corporate Ventures involving fossil fuels (coughKEYSTONEXLcough) are putting our lives in serious danger.

(AP) — The federal agency responsible for making sure states effectively oversee the safety of natural gas and other pipelines is failing to do its job, a government watchdog said in a report released Friday.

The federal effort is so riddled with weaknesses that it's not possible to ensure states are enforcing pipeline safety, the report by the Transportation Department's Office of Inspector General said. The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, isn't ensuring key state inspectors are properly trained, inspections are being conducted frequently enough and inspections target the most risky pipelines, it said.

Uh oh.

The post goes on to say that more than 20 percent of our pipelines are more than 50 years old or made of inadequate materials. And don't get me started on those incompetent inspectors. One had less than a year's experience.

Without proper oversight, deadly explosions and leaks occur, so clearly, the qualifications and competence of those who are charged with keeping us safe have to improve drastically.

But wait. One of the top three items on the official Republican bucket list is "less oversight." Oh, those wacky zany "pro-lifers" and their totes adorbs shortsightedness. The inspectors and the companies who are the focus of any given watchdog are as responsible as anyone for maintaining safe, healthy, reliable conditions for everyone affected by their operations. But so are our elected officials.

You know what's fiction? That climate change doesn't exist. That climate change isn't man-made. That shifting to clean, renewable energy won't affect the impending disaster that is climate change. That if we don't do that soon, we'll be just fine, thankyouverymuch.

If you support gradual-- and accelerating-- devastation; if you're okay with coping with the increasing frequency and intensity of deadly hurricanes, "Snowmageddons," frackquakes, floods, and fires; if you don't object to pouring billions into cleaning up the messes Mother Nature is and will continue to create due to our self-indulgent and willful reliance on and acceptance of dirty crude oil, tar sands, methane, and coal, then you support a toxic, grim future for all of us, our children, their children, and so on.

I have been preaching about global climate change for years. In the Jewish tradition, there is a teaching that it took Noah 120 years to build the ark so people would ask him what he was doing and hopefully heed his warning.

We are getting closer to our "120 years," as scientists and others have been sounding the alarm for years. How much longer will we think that money trumps doing the responsible and moral thing regarding fossil fuels?

Having the know-how to change, having the knowledge that we need to change, and seeing destructive forces at work but refusing to change: these are tell-tale signs of addiction and suffering that I counsel in my career.

Our addiction to the ways of the past are destroying us. For humanity, intervention is needed.

Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater

Pasadena

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This year's National Climate Assessment will do little to sway those in Congress who are in denial about the contribution of human pollution to the changes seen around the globe. Even those who admit that our emissions into the air might add to the problem say that our efforts would be insignificant, so why go to the expense and trouble.

We should ask them, "Even if human-caused pollution has no effect on climate, why would we want to continue to pump such massive amounts of poison into the air?"

Charter schools are cheating our children. Brace yourselves: Over 100 million dollars meant for our kids have been misused, lost or stolen by charter operators and corporations. Why? Because there is no regulation. We all know how the GOP and corporate America hate regulations, and this is why.

Privatization gives greedy, corporate types all kinds of opportunities. For instance, the opportunity to use taxpayer funds meant for students; they're using that money, our money, to pay for house renovations, outings to strip clubs, and vacations to Atlantic City.

How in the world can we keep giving money to people (because we all know that corporations are people, my friend) who do this? How in the world can Americans keep supporting-- and voting for-- these pigs?

By the way, the report covers what "might just be the tip of the" proverbial iceberg, focusing on a mere fifteen of the forty-two states that have charter school laws.

While there are plenty of other troubling issues surrounding charter schools—from high rates of racial segregation, to their lackluster overall performance records, to questionable admission and expulsion practices—this report sets all those admittedly important issues aside to focus squarely on activity that appears it could be criminal, and arguably totally out of control. It does not even mention questions raised by sky-high salaries paid to some charter CEOs, such as 16 New York City charter school CEOs who earned more than the head of the city’s public school system in 2011-12. Crime, not greed, is the focus here. [...]

[The report] organized the abuse into six basic categories, each of which is treated in its own section:

• Charter operators using public funds illegally for personal gain;
• School revenue used to illegally support other charter operator businesses;
• Mismanagement that puts children in actual or potential danger;
• Charters illegally requesting public dollars for services not provided;
• Charter operators illegally inflating enrollment to boost revenues; and,
• Charter operators mismanaging public funds and schools.

Perhaps most disturbingly, under the first category, crooked charter school officials displayed a wide range of lavish, compulsive or tawdry tastes. Examples include:

• Joel Pourier, former CEO of Oh Day Aki Heart Charter School in Minnesota, who embezzled $1.38 million from 2003 to 2008. He used the money on houses, cars, and trips to strip clubs. Meanwhile, according to an article in the Star Tribune, the school “lacked funds for field trips, supplies, computers and textbooks.”

[...]

Others spent their stolen money on everything from a pair of jet skis for $18,000 to combined receipts of $228 for cigarettes and beer, to over $30,000 on personal items from Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, Louis Vuitton, Coach and Tommy Hilfiger. But the real damage came from the theft of resources for children’s future.

No wonder Republicans are trying to do away with public schools. They're no fun!

Why hasn't this big, corporate money, corporate influence event already been canceled, especially after this from the Los Angeles Times: "AT&T wields enormous power in Sacramento"?

No other single corporation has spent more trying to influence legislators in recent years. It dispenses millions in political donations and has an army of lobbyists. Bills it opposes are usually defeated.

California Secretary of State candidate Derek Cressman today blasted lawmakers attending the Speakers Cup Weekend in Pebble Beach this weekend, saying the golf-and-schmooze event embodied everything that is wrong with politics in a state where three lawmakers were recently suspended from the Senate for corruption.

Cressman today called on Assembly Speaker John Perez to cancel the event, just as Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg had recently cancelled a Senate golf fundraiser with corporate interests.

Cressman, who is running on a platform of transparency and reducing the influence of corporate money, said the Pebble Beach event was just a legal version of the bribery and influence-peddling in the Golden State that has made headline news across the country in recent months.

“This event is emblematic of how corporate money undermines our democracy,” said Cressman. “Corporations like AT&T use campaign contributions to elect corporate Democrats who then deliver legislation that boosts their profits at the expense of California consumers,” he said.

“Frankly, it seems AT&T has California by the calls.”

As an example, Cressman pointed to SB 1161, authored by Senator Alex Padilla to deregulate phone service provided over Internet lines. Consumer advocate Mark Toney of The Utility Reform Network called it “the most anti-consumer bill ever introduced in California.” AT&T likes the bill so much that it has made a similar version a “model bill” of the American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC. ALEC is an organization that connects state legislators with corporate and right wing organizations that is best known for promoting the Stand Your Ground law implicated in the Florida shooting of Trayvon Martin.

Senator Padilla has received at least $108,732 from telecommunication interests, including $43,395 from AT&T and it’s employees during his time in the Senate.

Overall, AT&T has given California legislators $2,336,468 since 2006.

Cressman wants to get corporate money out of California politics by overturning the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC that struck down bans on corporate campaign spending under the reasoning that corporations should be considered people with constitutional rights. “AT&T is not a person and it shouldn’t be allowed to buy our elections,” said Cressman. He has led a national movement to place questions on the ballot giving voters the chance to call for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court. SB 1272, to be voted on in the California Senate Elections Committee on April 21st, would place such a measure on the statewide ballot in November.

AT&T has consistently been able to block legislation to remove monthly fees that it charges consumers to have an unlisted phone number, a basic privacy protection that reportedly nets telecom firms upwards of $50 million per year.

In another instance of telecommunications influence, just last week Senate bill SB962, which was sponsored by Senator Mark Leno in response to the high rate of stolen smartphones, would have forced electronics manufacturers to install a shut-off function in all smartphones failed in the state Senate. The so-called “kill switch” legislation would have required companies to manufacture smartphones with technology that would make them inoperable when not in the owner’s possession.